Ethereum Worth over $1.5M From the AscendEx Hack Moved to Uniswap

Last December’s $77 million hacked from AscendEX, mostly in Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain token, and MATIC, have started to get back in circulation.

Hackers have begun moving some stolen crypto to decentralized exchange Uniswap, according to on-chain data first spotted by security research house PeckShield.

Ethereum Worth $1.5 Million Moved

Approximately two months after the security breach on the crypto exchange AscendEx (formerly Bitmax), took place the anonymous hackers have started to transfer funds from the hack.

For now, around $1.5 million worth of Ethereum has been sent to Uniswap in their first attempts to launder the money.

The Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange suffered a hot wallet breach of $77.7 million, on December 13. As per early estimations, the total amount swiped during the security breach was close to about $80 million in Ethereum, Binance Coin, and MATIC.

Soon after the hack, withdrawals had been suspended, as the exchange looked into the data of the breach promising that no customers will lose their digital assets. Further, the addresses that received the funds were blacklisted immediately, and there was little-to-no movement until recently.

Shedding light on the transfers, the blockchain security company PeckShield highlighted that there’s activity coming from one of the Ethereum addresses. They further stated that the hackers sent roughly 516 Ethereum, worth $1.5 million to Uniswap in their first attempts to launder the funds.

Since Uniswap is a decentralized exchange, it doesn’t require any KYC, which means that the perpetrators can mix their coins and then transfer them to new addresses without being traced.

Increasing Crypto Crimes

While crypto crimes and centralized exchange hacks are on the rise, the governing bodies are tightening their reach around such issues.

For instance, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) recently launched what seemed to be the largest financial seizure ever related to cryptocurrencies.

The authorities seized $3.6 billion worth of digital assets linked to a hack on the crypto exchange Bitfinex made in 2016, just a week back. Notably, over the last year, as digital assets gained traction, crypto criminals and hackers too reaped enormous earnings from the same.

ref: yahoofinance